177; Beard Week Gone Wrong

So, I stepped on the scale at my daughter's doctor appointment today. 177 was the number. I was going to be pretty happy if I kept it close as close to 180 as possible throughout Tiffany's pregnancy. To be on the other side is very encouraging. Ideally, I'll get down to 165 for the marathon. A little lighter would be fine too, but 160 should be the floor.

In other news, I turned my goatee into a beard over the weekend. On Sunday, I was evening things out and accidentally took a chunk out the hair on my chin. I then had a decision to make. I could scrap beard week and shave everything. Or I could try to even out the error and make an odd looking beard. I went with the latter, thinking that I can get that spot to come back in.

Here are the results:




Pretty handsome, I know. Not sure why it looks like I have a wandering eye in the second one either. And the more I look at the second one, the shittier it looks. Not very even.

Maybe I should just go down to 'stache. Bring back something like this:


This was taken on the eve of the 2005 Chicago Marathon, when I ran with my cop friends. I am kidding. I don't have any friends that are cops. Acquaintances, yes; friends, no. It looks like I could be one, though. I ran with "Moustache Love" on my shirt in '05. Better than "Moustache Rides 5 Cents," I suppose. Nice glasses, too.

Followers?

I have added "Followers" to the sidebar. I don't think it was an option when I first started this back in June or July. Feel free to join.

I was able to kind of get back in the swing of things this past week. I am going back and forth between using Garmin Training Center and SportTracks to keep track of my runs. I have just figured out how to upload from the Garmin to the Training Center successfully in a timely fashion. I hate the fact the TC's week goes from Sunday to Saturday. But I do like seeing avg heart rate by mile and max heart rate without having to dig at all. Maybe I'll keep doing them both. So, depending on which format I use, I either ran 21 or 24 miles last week. I'll try to get in the 25-30 range this week and tack on a few every week. I'd like to consistently be back in the 40-50 range by May and be ready to go in June when training will officially start.

In It to Win It

You know it. I registered for the 2009 Chicago Marathon today. I will be running my 6th Chicago Marathon and 8th overall. I am excited and nervous already. I know, it's in October. I feel like I had so much momentum coming out of the '08 Chicago Marathon. Then I ran a 2 minute PR in a 10K in November. Unfortunately, I feel like I have given it all away and will be starting from close to scratch. I had been able to average over 20 miles per week since from October until last week. I wasn't able to get any miles in. So, I basically took a week off and got 7 in on Sunday, so I am off to a decent start this week. Right now, I have to make the decision between getting in a few extra hours of sleep or running, so it's a little tough. I'll try to piece-meal some miles together for the next two weeks to three weeks and then try to get going a little more.

I'm starting to read the new edition of Advanced Marathoning and will pick a plan from there to train for October. I'll most likely have to start building my base very soon and ramping up my miles so I'll be ready to go when the first cycle of training starts. The countdown's on.